THE RELATION OF MIRACLES TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. BY THE REV. J. H. RYLANCE, D.D., RECTOR OF ST. MARK'S CHURCH, NEW-YORK. THE RELATION OF MIRACLES TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 'IF I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works."-JOHN 10:37, 38. No unfair reflection was meant to be implied, I take it, in the antithesis between "Christian Truth and modern Opinion" which we find in the general title of this current course of religious lectures. We are to see in such superscription no more than a simple, candid recognition of the fact, that between what is commonly regarded as "Christian Truth," on the one hand, and certain "Opinions," theories, or hypotheses, on the other, there exist various occasions of dissension and controversy, toward an adjustment of which these apologetic discourses are meant to be an honest and a substantial contribution. How far they will serve to this end will depend, in the main, perhaps, upon the intellectual and scholarly competency of those appointed to discuss the several subjects. But something will depend, also, upon the temper or spirit in which such discussions are conducted and accepted. We are supposed to enter the arena of debate free from every feeling prejudicial to Truth; with no disposition to dogmatize or dictate; nor to accept dogmatism, on the one side or on the other. The largest latitude must be allowed to investigation, and the severest exercise to the critical faculty must be freely conceded to all, or we had better retire from the strife, and betake ourselves for safety to recognized and accepted authorities. The want of such an open-minded and impartial tolerance is an imputation very commonly alleged against the Christian apologist, and the reproach must be acknowledged as sometimes well-deserved. But the charge may be fairly retorted, alas! upon some who seem to assume that the judicial temper is never disturbed in men of science, nor the line of a rigorous logic ever forcibly bent to sustain a favorite hypothesis. Such a suspicion seldom fairly lies, perhaps, against acknowledged leaders of scientific thought; but in the ranks of their followers, there are many, it may be feared, who strain the doctrines of their masters, or make inferential applications of them, which betray what we may mildly term an unscientific animus. Men of this order constitute in our day a sort of lay-priesthood, as narrow, and intolerant, and tyrannous in temper as the priesthood of the Church ever was in the days of its darkest supremacy. And this temper we encounter in its most arrogant mood specially in the field assigned me for discussion this evening. Inspired and fortified by the predominant tendencies and teachings of modern Materialism, scientific skepticism has waxed bold and defiant of late, and the spirit of this type of infidelity to-day is not so much one of doubt, as of scorn, of all supernatural claims and pretensions. The leading adversaries of historical Christianity, in this school, disdainfully refuse to consider any evidence whatever submitted in favor of any special intervention upon the established order of Nature, but start with the assumption as a postulate, that a miracle is impossible. The extravagance of such a position must be obvious, however, to every candid thinker. Such a sweeping negative is incapable of being proved, except by an exhaustive induction, not only of all the facts of Nature as we know it now, but of all its past transitions and stages of development, and of all the possibilities which the future may have in reThe possibility of miracles, indeed, cannot be consistently denied, except on the ground of sheer Atheism. But the existence of a supernatural Being is necessarily assumed in the very terms serve. |